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Dear Suds Buds,

I know that the world of soaps is a fictitious place. There is no real Pine Valley or Oakdale. No such place as Llanview or Genoa City. Salem and Harmony are just figments of some writer’s imagination. Truth is, there are real towns with these names, but they are in no way at all similar to the soap opera towns with which they just happen to share a name.

It just seems to me that even though there are murders and mayhem, loves lost, and babies switched in the daytime towns of soaps, there are also just as many convenient and easy accomplishments for denizens who rarely even go to work during the day.

Where else in the world can you get a book published on the first try? In Llanview, that’s where. Where can you become the head of a major cosmetics company without any formal training? In Pine Valley, of course. Where can you sing a few tunes and get a record contract? Genoa City sounds about right. Port Charles, too. Where can you kill someone and get off scott free? Where can you fake the paternity of a child, switch DNA records, kidnap an innocent victim and openly be a mob boss? Only in soapdom.

One time several years ago I remember a sequence of scenes on All My Children. The action took place at the Chandler mansion. Adam and Liza were quarreling – what else is new – and talking about Christmas time. Cut to a scene elsewhere. Myrtles’ store, maybe. A few quick lines of dialog and moments later, we are back at the Chandler mansion and the place is decked to the nines with Christmas ornamentation. Like two minutes later. What, did Santa’s elves all converge upon Adam’s place, decorate like the dickens and scoot back to the North Pole all in the same amount of time it took Myrtle to sell a dress? I posted about this “Insta” Christmas, coining the phrase “Insta” and started an entire movement called the “Instas of Soaps” on some AOL Message board back in 1994.

The “Instas” exist with successes and accomplishments as well. With little or no training, schooling or resources, soap opera denizens become CEOs of companies, commissioners of police, rock stars, published authors, you name it. They make oodles of money and never actually work. On another of my all time favorite shows, Moonlighting, the character David Addison, played by Bruce Willis, was once known to demand. “No work AND pay. No work AND pay.” It’s kind of like that in soaps.